Eat my heartWhat's the recipe for love?

With the baby due any day now (for any­one who didn’t know, I’m 38 weeks preg­nant) I’m obsessed with nurs­ery decor.  My most recent pas­sion? Mobiles. I want one. Actu­ally, I want to make one, but am not sure how to go about doing it.

I’ve been scour­ing the net for inspi­ra­tion. I want some­thing bold and sculp­tural; eye candy for the baby but also fetch­ing room decor in its own right.  I love the Calderesque look, but sharp metal pieces hang­ing over a baby’s head seems like a bad idea.

Here’s a cou­ple mobiles I really dig.

Exotic ani­mals are boy-friendly and not too cutesy (unlike the numer­ous but­ter­flies and birdies you see everywhere.)

Made with leather, this abstract mobile from Etsy is eye candy for grown ups. But will a baby dig it too?

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My friend Marc shared this arti­cle with me today. In “Why You’re Not Mar­ried” Tracy McMil­lan, a screen­writer on Mad Men and United States of Tara, dis­cusses what it takes to find a com­mit­ted rela­tion­ship. It’s amus­ing, cyn­i­cal, and more than a lit­tle insight­ful (but be warned ladies, some con­tent may offend.)

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This lazy blog­ger has been mean­ing to share a deli­cious Christ­mas cookie recipe pulled from always-inspiring pages of Chate­laine mag­a­zine.   The com­bi­na­tion of choco­late chunks and gin­ger is sheer yule­tide magic and my Christ­mas party guests gob­bled them up almost as fast at the potent Jack Daniel’s punch. (Recipe note: Be sure not to over­bake the cook­ies. The descrip­ton, “bake until golden” con­fused me. I’d say “bake until the cook­ies go a shade lighter, and slightly golden.” Or just stick to the cook­ing time pre­scribed ver­sus judg­ing by colour. I spoiled a batch pro­ject­ing my own idea of golden, which is darker and deeper than Chatelaine’s idea. Or maybe I’m just colour blind.  Though the white sugar coat­ing added a fes­tive flare to the cookie, I’m not sure it was nec­es­sary. Not adding it will give the cook­ies a more clas­sic choco­late chip cookie vibe that you can make year-round.  Next time I try a batch with­out. But either way, this cookie recipe is a must-make, even for those of you who, like me, detest gin­ger­bread cookies.)

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I threw a Christ­mas cock­tail last Fri­day and whipped up this easy and oh so potent punch.   What’s nice about serv­ing punch is that it’s pre­made. No shak­ing and stir­ring while other guests arrive and sud­denly you’ve got a queue of cocktail-less guests in need of a hit.  It’s also more glam­orous then mulled wine or egg nog and yet, so sim­ple to make.  Just mix together a bot­tle of Jack,  some fruit juice, spiced rum and a lit­tle maple syrup.  The result is intox­i­cat­ing, mys­te­ri­ous… It’s not just a punch, it’s a potion.

To serve this mag­i­cal elixir, just fill up a glass bowl with the nec­es­sary ingre­di­ents and lay it on the counter.  When a new guest arrives, fill a glass with ice from a nearby bucket, scoop in a ladle-full of punch and hand it over (always with the caveat “Be care­ful, it’s pure booze.” )   My guests loved it.   Some dreamt about it after. It’s a Christ­mas­time keeper and I will def­i­nitely make it again next year, or sooner.

Wen­zou Punch   — Adapted from The New York Times.

1 bot­tle of Jack Daniels, 750 ml

375 ml squeezed clemen­tine juice

1/ 4 cup maple syrup

1 /4 cup Cap­tain Mor­gan Spiced Rum

sliced Clemen­tines for garnish

Mix  ingre­di­ents in a big glass bowl (or ceramic, if you do not have glass.)  Ladle indi­v­d­ual 2 ounce por­tions in cups or small glasses with ice.  Plac­ing a pretty ice bucket beside the punch works per­fectly. I advise YOU con­trol­ling the serv­ing. One per guest, two per very spe­cial guest. IMPORTANT: Add the ice as the punch is poured not ear­lier or it’ll water down the mix. I used fresh-squeezed clemen­tine juice instead of tan­ger­ine and Cap­tain Morgan’s Spiced Rum for the required dram. If you want you can chill the punch first in the fridge but it is not nec­es­sary and I like how the ice mel­lows the room tem­per­a­ture punch as you pour it.  Serves punch for 15 to 20.

I served the punch in tiny wine glasses I found at my local frip­perie. (For­get plas­tic cups! So tacky and and bad for the planet. You can always re-donate your glasses after the party if you don’t want to store them.) Smaller glasses work bet­ter, since this punch packs a whol­lop and a lit­tle goes a long way. Two ounces on ice is enough to get your guests warmed up and ready to min­gle, then they can switch over to wine or beer for the rest of the evening.

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On a cool sum­mer evening at the FC’s grand­par­ents home on the Cote D’Azur, I was treated to the most deli­cious lamb and apri­cot tagine.  I kept serv­ing myself more (sec­onds, thirds)  hop­ing no one would notice, and pan­icky as I saw oth­ers also div­ing in.  Would there be enough for fourths? I could barely focus on the din­ner party con­ver­sa­tion, too busy think­ing about how I could score another spoon­ful with­out rais­ing eyebrows.

Nadette and Henri’s cook, Rose, con­sis­tently blows my mind with her sim­ple, home­style French cook­ing.  This tagine (which served twelve that night)  is one of my favourites and when the FC asked for the recipe, Rose kindly sent us a scan from her  book. (Alas, the book is not den­ti­fied here, but I intend to find her source,  promise!)   Unlike other Mor­roc­can lamb stews,  the recipe doesn’t call for extra veg­eta­bles or canned toma­toes, it’s just lamb, onions, dried apri­cots, spices, and water.  So basic, I love that.   I also love the sweet syrupy tex­ture the apri­cots add to the stew. Divine.

I made the tagine last night for a win­ter din­ner party and it was a huge hit.  Just like Rose, I served it with polenta instead of the tra­di­tional cous­cous. It’s just the per­fect (and crazy-easy) com­pli­ment for this dish.   For the veg­e­tar­i­ans, I made Julia’s Child rata­touille, which also pairs nicely with polenta but a sim­ple salad would work too if you’re not cater­ing to her­bi­vores (who I totally respect, by the way!)

Here’s the recipe. It serves six, but you can eas­ily dou­ble it, as Rose did, for big­ger groups.  Serve directly from the pot, buf­fet style, so your guests can dive right in (and you don’t have to deal with arrang­ing indi­vid­ual plates, which always leaves the first per­son wait­ing politely as their food turns to ice.  Just watch out for the glut­tons (like me)  this dish goes fast.

The recipe is in French so you’ll have to trans­late, as I did.  But the dish itself is a breeze.  (Quick Note On The Lamb Prepa­ra­tion: The recipe calls for forty-five min­utes of sim­mer­ing, but I dou­bled this (mak­ing sure to add the apri­cots only for the last twenty min­utes.) You can’t really over­cook lamb shoul­der, it just gets more and more melt-in-your-mouth ten­der. I also asked the butcher to leave a few bones in some of the meat cubes, for added flavour. Quick Note On the Polenta: I dou­bled Giada De Lau­ren­tis’  recipe,  adding less but­ter and about 1/2 cup of grated parme­san for extra kicks. )

Bon appetit!

2 Responses to “Winter Dinner Party — Rose’s Tagine With Polenta”

1. décembre 21st, 2010 at 3:35 #Andrea Glenn

   I made this for some friends tonight and it was amaz­ing. Added bonus: brush­ing up on my French with some help from google trans­late. Well worth the work. Thank you!

2. décembre 22nd, 2010 at 3:13 #laura

   Andrea, I’m so glad it worked out for you. And bravo on the French.

My friend Elena told me about these disgusting-looking Hal­loween cook­ies (Witch Fin­gers) and now I can’t wait to make them. (Click on the photo and jump to the orig­i­nal recipe at www.lepetitbrioche.com)

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1. octobre 29th, 2010 at 12:37 #Cesar

   Does it taste good?

An old cook­ing pho­bia is finally con­quered. Home­made pizza dough. Thanks to this recipe from Apart­ment Therapy’s The Kitchn, I have the power to make pizza from scratch any time I want. With no ris­ing required, you can make the dough the same night. It’s thin and crispy and just the way I like it. Feel­ing ambi­tious (and with the help of my friend Peter ) I also tried Smit­ten Kitchen’s Sim­ple Pizza Dough. It’s a lit­tle thicker, also crisp but with a pleas­ant “chew,” and requires just 2 hours ris­ing time. Both are great. I com­bined SK’s shaved aspara­gus pizza recipe with Apart­ment Therapy’s dough and it was perfection.

Oh, one more thing. Buy a pizza stone. Trust me, you won’t regret it. You can use them for all kinds of bak­ing; includ­ing bread, cook­ies and bis­cuits. I seri­ously can­not believe the qual­ity pizza com­ing out of my hum­ble oven with this stone. It wasn’t expen­sive either. At La Soupiere on Mont Royal, a large rec­tan­gu­lar stone cost me $24, but I saw smaller round ones for only $12. I also read an arti­cle on how you can build your own pizza oven using unglazed ceramic tiles, which sounds cool too.

Even bet­ter, when you make your own pizza, you con­trol the cheese. (Cheese equals fat, remem­ber?) Speak­ing of which, the Pro­volone Fort from Hamel’s I added to my aspara­gus pizza was divine. I also rec­om­mend adding asi­ago or any­thing with a lit­tle kick to your basic mozarella base. You can be spar­ing too. With a thin crust, a lit­tle cheese goes a long way.

For the red sauce I fol­lowed the link on Apart­ment Ther­apy to a sim­ple and deli­cious red sauce. It was yet another rev­e­la­tion. So easy and so yummy. One batch makes vol­umes, and I froze more than half. But please, add more than the 2 table­spoons indi­cated. With the oven at 500 degrees, the sauce evap­o­rates quickly. Even on these small piz­zas, you need more like 1/3 cup min­i­mum, even a 1/2. This way you can really enjoy the flavour. For my red sauce combo, I used finely chopped onion or shal­lots, sliced mush­room, sliced toma­toe and Ital­ian sausage. I also added a lit­tle red sauce to the SK aspara­gus pizza and it added a nice tang. Once you know how to make the dough, you can do pretty much any­thing you want with the toppings.

I’m so excited I want to open up my own pizza shop.

No need to fuss with the shape of the pizza crust. Leave the per­fect cir­cles to PizzaPizza.

A pizza stone gives the crust a crisp, evenly-baked tex­ture all the way through.

Mak­ing my own red sauce was so sat­is­fy­ing (and so easy.) Canned toma­toes, olive oil, tomato paste, wine and 8 cloves gar­lic. That’s it!

One Response to “Homemade Pizza Dough”

1. novembre 13th, 2011 at 6:45 #laura

   Made this again the other night and cracked a new top­ping combo, cour­tesy of Peter and his friend Derek. Cheese (fontina, ched­dar) spinach, finely chopped onion and sun dried tomatos (keep them whole, and use the dry chewy kind, they ten­der­ize well at this tem­per­a­tre and add a really great tex­ture the final pizza.)
   Love this sim­ple dough so much. No more going back to Dr Oetker’s!

Finally, a pic­ture of our new kitchen. The FC took this with his brand new IPhone (obssessed with all the appli­ca­tions, sud­denly he’s snap-happy, which is good news for the blog.)

As you can see, there’s no coun­ter­top, nor back­plash, no facade for the island, nor han­dles on the cup­boards. But even in its unfin­ished state, you can feel the warm spirit of the space.

I love my new kitchen.

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Since meet­ing the sporty FC, I’m now totally hooked on camp­ing. I mean real camp­ing. A tent. A canoe. A remote lake in the woods. Steep portages. The pos­si­bilty of run­ning into a bear. (Okay, not the bear part. Hate that part.)

Though in my last post on the mat­ter, I focused on camp­ing food (and there’s so much more to say on that topic) I don’t think we can for­get about fash­ion. Rough­ing it doesn’t mean you can’t look cute at the same time. Knee socks, plaid shorts, a fish­ing hat, a 70s plaid flan­nel shirt with a fat col­lar, a woolly sweater for chilly nights by the fire. Don’t let geeky gor­tex take over!. Please? Nature is beau­ti­ful. We should be too.

My friend Marc nailed his camp­ing look last week­end in Parc Pap­ineau Labelle, res­ur­rect­ing his old scout cap and even don­ning a tie before our mush­room hunt­ing excur­sion. Adorable! Also notice his water flask. Use­ful and stylish.

Dried mush­rooms and porta­bel­los made a tasty fire­side pasta dish.

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Four weeks ago, my friend Eilidh came home from work to find her boyfriend of three years sit­ting on the front porch smok­ing a cig­a­r­rette, suit­case on the ground beside him. “I can’t do this any­more.” That’s all he said. She tried to ask ques­tions (why? when? how?) but he wouldn’t talk. He was cold as stone. Then he was gone.

To lift my friend’s mood, we decided to take a hol­i­day together. One over­priced flight later, I arrived in BC ready to embark on an upbeat all-girl road trip. Our first stop was a fam­ily wed­ding on Van­cou­ver Island, an event bound to arouse mixed feel­ings; joy, loss, rage, regret. I was going to be my friend’s “girl-date.” Her buffer. Her drink­ing buddy. With enough booze, music and prospec­tive cute sin­gle boys, this wed­dding would be a breeze. Much to our hor­ror, the wed­ding was a dry event with, gulp, no danc­ing, and lots of mar­ried young fel­lows hold­ing new­born babies in their arms. Damn those sober, fast-breeding Chris­t­ian types!

For­tu­nately, Mother Nature stepped in to save us. Moun­tains, giant trees, sprawl­ing ocean views, wild deers pranc­ing along the roads…the scenery was our enter­tain­ment. One after­noon, Eilidh and I took a hike in the woods and were instantly drawn to the lush black­ber­ries grow­ing wild along the path. When picked at their late sum­mer prime, black­ber­ries have a sweet­ness so dis­tract­ing all your heartache goes away. Eilidh was par­ti­c­u­raly adept at spot­ting just the right ones and it quickly became a pas­sion. The sec­ond you taste a good black­berry, it’s like an addic­tion. Fran­ti­cally, hun­grily, you pick your way through a few sour berries in search of another mouth­wa­ter­ing hit. It’s a treach­er­ous activ­ity too, since the bushes have thorns and more then once I had to dis­en­tan­gle my sweater from a clus­ter of maul­ing branches.

Love’s the same. Find­ing the right per­son is no easy task. After end­less dis­cus­sions, we decided Eilidh’s man was sour from the start. She would have to choose bet­ter next time. And she was hun­gry for it. I could tell. While we walked along the beach, she texted an old flame, hop­ing to start a spark, then bought a new flirty skirt on the high street in Vic­to­ria that she said would be “per­fect datewear.” She was dis­card­ing her rot­ten black­berry on the com­post heap and get­ting back out into the woods. She was my blackberry-picking superhero/goddess! Resil­liant, beau­ti­ful, brave, funny, with the sharp eye of an expert huntress, I knew she would succeed.

Meawhile, with all this rela­tion­ship talk, I couldn’t help but won­der– how long was my love story going to last? Would the sweet­ness ever go sour?

When I returned home to Mon­treal a week later, the FC was wait­ing for me at the front gate as my taxi pulled up. It was early morn­ing and he was just head­ing to work, wear­ing his usual rum­pled shirt and fresh-from-the-shower slicked down side part. The tim­ing was per­fect. We embraced, shyly at first. The elec­tric­ity, the magic, the rev­er­ence for what we had infused every moment. Unable to say good­bye so soon, the FC dropped my bags in front of the house and we walked to the metro together hand in hand, stop­ping every few steps to embrace. In the sta­tion, the FC kept look­ing back as he stepped onto the esca­la­tor down to his train. I waved back from the turn­styles, silly, grin­ning, already miss­ing him…

It was so very sweet. Like the per­fect late sum­mer blackberry.

4 Responses to “Sweet and Sour Love: Blackberry season in BC”

1. août 30th, 2010 at 9:22 #Peter Sloan

   Find­ing the per­fect berry after sam­pling all those sour ones. Hav­ing it then ripen into a beau­ti­ful fruity wine rather than turn into sour vine­gar. Yikes! Per­haps Eilidh should take a bit of time to clear her palette before jump­ing back into the berry patch! That’s what I am doing for now. For now.….
   Nice post Laura.

2. août 30th, 2010 at 10:56 #laura

   Thanks Peter. Well, E’s not exactly jump­ing.. just dream­ing about jump­ing, get­ting psy­ched up for it. Lots of mourn­ing to do too. But hope­fully not too much. Sum­mer doesn’t last forever.

3. août 30th, 2010 at 11:37 #Peter Sloan

   And, love, for some of us ‚doesn’t last for­ever. A time­less and uni­ver­sal story.
   I empathize with her.

4. août 31st, 2010 at 9:49 #laura

   Agreed Peter. That’s my fas­ci­na­tion these days, and I guess the whole idea of the blog too. Is part of the “recipe for love” that it last indef­i­nitely? Even a favourite dish can tire after a while. Or is there a way to renew it with fresh ingre­di­ents? I don’t know. I’m tak­ing my romance one day at a time, try­ing (and fail­ing) not to think too much about the long term.